Railways to run 17 premium AC-special trains on busy routes

Premium trains with dynamic pricing are expected to be announced for the busiest routes during the Indian Railway Budget.

New Delhi |
Published on:February 12, 2014 3:20 pm

Encouraged by the success of a premium AC-special train between Delhi and Mumbai, Railways have decided to run 17 more such trains on busy routes and explore the possibility of running semi-high speed trains between 160-200 kmph to Chandigarh and Agra from here.

The premium train to Mumbai, to handle the extra rush during Christmas and New Year, had fetched an increased earning of about 48 per cent as compared to Mumbai Rajdhani, as the fares were charged under dynamic fare mechanism scheme much like airlines. “Such dynamic pricing was widely appreciated by users and media and gave increased earnings of about 48 per cent as compared to Rajdhani services on the same sector. We are considering operation of this scheme on a larger scale,” Railway Minister Mallikarjun Kharge said in his Interim Budget speech 2014-15.

He announced 17 such premium trains from different parts of the country, which are considered high density routes. The Minister said there are seasonal and occasion-specific instances when demand for travel by certain train goes up and passengers, on such occasions, should be prepared to pay more to undertake journey.

Most of these train are weekly or bi-weekly and would run on routes such as Howrah-Pune, Howrah-Mumbai, Kamakhya-Chennai, Mumbai-Patna, Nizamuddin-Madgaon, Sealdah-Jodhpur, Ahmedabad-Delhi Sarai Rohilla and Trivandrum-Bangalore. Some premium trains have also been introduced to Katra and rail connectivity to the holy town is expected to be commissioned soon.

The Minister announced 39 new express trains, 10 passenger trains, four MEMU and three DMU trains. He also announced a semi-high speed project, with trains running at 160-200 kmph on existing routes such as Delhi-Agra and Delhi-Chandigarh.